Tuesday Morning Commute - rushed

No time for chit chat

This year's Congressional Bike Ride will be in honor of Gabby Giffords. Maybe more than two congress members will show up.

The Montgomery County Planning Department is backing bike sharing for traffic mitigation as part of the White Flint Redevelopment Program. "We recommend that development of a bike sharing system in the White Flint area be incorporated in this project. This system would be similar to, or an expansion of, the Capital Bikeshare system in Washington DC and Arlington. The County has explored development of such a system both independently and through participation in the unsuccessful MWCOG TIGER II grant application during Fall 2010. We believe that such a system would also be appropriate in Bethesda and Silver Spring, where we already have higher levels of bike usage. Bike sharing stations could become a logical component in transportation mitigation programs for developers in these areas, although the County must first establish a basic and successful system upon which the private sector could expand. While the project budget would likely not be sufficient to actually implement a successful bikesharing project (estimated at about $300K for any one of the three candidate areas), it can provide the functional, legal and administrative groundwork for the project."

Comparing year-to-year count data on the Custis trail shows either a 1.8%, 8% or 11.2% increase, depending on how you do it. "the highest ridership day of all was actually Saturday, Oct 30, 2010 with over 1,600 cyclists. This number was clearly an anomaly; ridership was skewed by the Stewart/Colbert rally on the mall."

The ICC will open on Feb 22. If there is a schedule for when the ICC trail will be built and opened, it is a well kept secret. There is almost no mention of the trail on the ICC project site.

The three feet passing bill was unanimously approved in the Virginia Senate. One of the House members who voted against it in the 5-4 vote that killed it on that side has said he will vote FOR the Senate version. Things are looking good.